How Ease Technologies Found Recurring Revenue Riches in Security

With the ever-aggressive advancement of digital crime from cyber-thieves and the increase of internet fraud, companies now fully recognize the importance of high-level security. Many businesses know they cannot completely protect their workers’ usernames, passwords and logins through traditional, largely manual means. The companies that really get this use two-factor authentication (2FA) as a defense against hackers trying to gain access to online accounts and company servers.

Traditionally, business security procedures often required only a simple combination of a username and a single password to gain PC, network, and application access. Unfortunately, online criminals find it rather easy to obtain passwords through malware, social engineering, brute force attacks, and myriad other methods.

Ease Technologies, which has been in the managed services business for over 25 years, is on board with 2FA, and is adopting AuthAnvil Security as a Service (SECaaS) by Kaseya.

The Move to AuthAnvil and SECaaS

Creating a service out of AuthAnvil is eased by Kaseya Powered Services, the fastest, easiest and most effective way for MSPs to deliver authentication as a service. Kaseya Powered Services include a cloud-based on-demand version of AuthAnvil custom-made for fast set up and speedy service creation.

With this Powered Service, Kaseya has done much of the heavy lifting in developing the services. The MSP can easily take Kaseya cloud services and offer them as its own.

AuthAnvil is a 2FA/multifactor authentication (MFA) solution that also includes password management and single sign-on (SSO). As a Powered Service from Kaseya, the SECaaS version is available on-demand and packed with resources to help providers quickly launch effective identity management services and fully monetize the solution to increase monthly recurring revenue (MRR).

Selling SECaaS

Ease has roughly 118 client organizations and about 5,000 endpoints. With AuthAnvil by Kaseya in place internally, Ease protects services for all 118 client organizations. “That’s one thing I highlight, literally showing them when we access our client management system how it uses multi-factor authentication and is tied to the technician who is logging into the system,” said Jason Shirdon, Vice President of Technologies for Ease.

Ease clients already know the value of the MSP’s services and close consultative relationship, and are open to the authentication message. “The first 10 clients we’ve gone to are all existing clients. We have been laying the foundation. We sell a lot of cloud workspaces or virtual desk desktop solutions, and have regulated industries that need to have multi-factor authentication. All of those clients signed up almost instantaneously. It is an easy sale. I’ve got a leg up on this,” Shirdon said.

Compliance is Critical

Healthcare clients, meanwhile, face rigorous compliance rules. “One client has medical transcribers that need to VPN into several hospital systems. One transcriber might take care of five hospitals so they will have five different VPNs. The easiest way is to give them a remote desktop that they two-factor authenticate into. When they log into the medical system, the desktop is only able to talk between that desktop and that health system. The data they transcribe is never out of a compliant environment,” he explained.

The SSO Factor

Ease was initially taken with the convenience of AuthAnvil. “It started for us not so much by being drawn to two-factor authentication to the desktop, but for single sign-on,” Shirdon said. Now single sign-on is a part of his daily life. “I use single sign-on every day, and our team uses it every day as well. I can get access to all our tools this way. I do not have to have an account. My techs can grant me access to one of their accounts, and I can leverage that software,” he said.

The Economic Value of Powered Services

As a leading-edge provider, Ease is interested in close, long-term, value-driven customer relationships. Moreover, these pay dividends. “The economic value for Ease is recurring revenue. Our goal a long time ago was to convert, move, and make sure we had reoccurring steady revenue. We are 99 percent recurring revenue today. My goal is to keep and build that recurring revenue that provides the ability to grow,” Shirdon said.

Recurring revenue is the key to long-term success. “I see a big opportunity. It does not always have to be a couple dollars per user, per month, there can be managed fees in there. There can be other fees we associate with the services that allow us to boost our profit margin,” Shirdon said. “As we expand that into single sign-on, creating workflows for all of these websites, setting up individual users so that they can use it from a personal standpoint for one click having a password vault, all of those items are billable opportunities for us. We can enhance not only the service that we give to the client but also our monthly services.”

Prospering in a Competitive Market

Ease is in an “ultra” competitive market, and the Powered Services model with multifactor authentication and SSO gives Ease a competitive advantage. Fortunately, Kaseya helps MSPs market SECaaS and AuthAnvil with sales collateral, customer facing webinars, and competitive analysis. Shirdon particularly likes the competitive analysis, which compares AuthAnvil to its rivals in terms of features and price, and show customers that Ease truly understands the competitive environment.

Doug Barney was the founding editor of Redmond Magazine, Redmond Channel Partner, Redmond Developer News and Virtualization Review. Doug also served as Executive Editor of Network World, Editor in Chief of AmigaWorld, and Editor in Chief of Network Computing.